Hispanic group offers anti-ACA ad

A conservative Hispanic advocacy group will launch a new round of ads Wednesday targeting a vulnerable House Democrat over Obamacare — an effort that highlights the problems that it says Latinos have faced with the health care law.

The ad from the LIBRE Initiative goes after Rep. Joe Garcia (D-Fla.) and stars a Latina doctor in southern Florida who cites a handful of concerns she has about the Affordable Care Act — such as higher premiums and canceled insurance policies.

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“This law does not put patients first,” the physician, Grazie Pozo Christie, says in the ad. “My patients ask if I will continue to provide care for them, and it pains me to say, ‘I don’t have an answer.’”

The ad closes by urging viewers to express their opposition to the health care law to Garcia. The broadcast and digital ads will run in the lawmaker’s Miami-area district on English-language stations starting Wednesday through Feb. 6.

This is the second series of ads that the LIBRE Initiative has run against the freshman Democrat on Obamacare, and a spokesman for the group said it will have spent more than $700,000 in Garcia’s district alone with the two ads.

“This law is hurting families in Florida and around the nation — and is doing particular damage in the Hispanic community,” the group’s executive director, Daniel Garza, will say in a forthcoming release.

The latest round of ads are part of a broader, seven-figure campaign from the LIBRE Initiative beginning last fall that goes after lawmakers who support the Affordable Care Act. The larger campaign has also targeted Democratic Rep. Pete Gallego of Texas.

Latinos are among the demographics that are key to whether Obamacare succeeds, but the law has run into several obstacles among the Hispanic community — such as a flawed enrollment website. The launch of CuidadeDeSalud.gov was delayed for weeks.

Just this week, the White House pushed back on comments from a health care navigator in Miami, who told the Associated Press that the website was written in “Spanglish.” A senior administration official said in-house translators and a translation company put together the text for the Spanish-language Obamacare website.

“Thousands of people in my district need health insurance, and ACA is helping them,” Garcia said in a statement to POLITICO Wednesday evening. “I’m committed to do everything I can to help people get enrolled and get covered, and that includes moving needed reforms for the bill and helping people find affordable coverage. Come November, many may wish they had not stood on the sideline complaining rather than helping.”